by Sue Harrison
As he spoke it seemed that the stars grew larger, came closer, as though they, too, wanted to hear the story. The familiar words made him bold. He tipped his face toward the sky and raised his voice. He did not see Qumalix as she squatted at the top of the climbing log, her chin cupped in one hand, her eyes also lifted to the stars as she listened to Cen’s story.
The Bering Sea
6435 B.C.
CEN’S STORY
Each day the swelling around Cen’s eyes lessened, and he was able to see a little more. Finally, even the roaring in his ears began to dim, so he could hear himself shout, and once thought he heard gulls crying.
At first he had been afraid. Each wave that rocked his boat, each swell that lifted it, brought his breath in gasps from his throat, and lifted his belly in nausea. What else did he have that the sea could want? His iqyax, his sax, his water bladders? His rotting fish? Perhaps it coveted those lashings that had once held paddles and harpoons. There was still a small bundle of trade goods in the bow, sodden and battling for space with his legs. If the sea wanted those things, he would gladly give all. If it chose to pluck him from the iqyax, he only asked that it be quick about it, play no games. He had heard too many storytellers speak of hunters who lived for days in the cold depths without wind to breathe or sax to warm.
His prayer had become the prayer of an old man:
“Let it come quickly. Let it come quickly.”
But as his vision returned, so did his courage. His right eye saw light, then shapes. He had heard elders speak of seeing in such a way, as though somehow fog had dimmed their sight. And to Cen, it seemed that even the sun had aged, cauled white like an old man’s eye. But each day his vision became clearer, and finally even his left eye began to see, though through a thin haze of brown-red light, something that gathered and flowed like a strange sea within the eye itself.
His eyeballs ached; pain pierced from brow to neck. But what was pain when each day brought him closer to seeing? He tried not to think that each day also meant he had less water, less food.
He could paddle for only a short time before he had to stop in his desperate need to breathe. His strokes were weak, his cedar branch paddle cumbersome. His helplessness made him angry.
Sometimes he sang death songs to honor his life, but he sang them defiantly like a warrior who prepares himself for battle. Most days, the sea remained calm, so Cen had no one to fight except himself. And how does a man battle such an enemy? Does he raise his knife against his own flesh?
He often brought Gheli into his thoughts, their daughters, and his son Ghaden. Then he would remind himself that he was a trader, and who more than a trader better knew the sea? It was not some bowl of water that sloshed side to side within its basin, but rather rivers and lakes all thrown together, currents acting and reacting. Surely, in his paddling he would find a sea-river that led him to land, a current that pulled him to a shore where he could find fresh water.
At first he had counted the days, but as he used up his water, he stopped keeping track. There was too much discouragement in knowing that soon he would have nothing to drink. Where was the rain? He had never seen the sky go so long without weeping. Did it rejoice with dry eyes over his agony?
The evening he used the last of his water, he fell into a light sleep. He dreamed of a feast, and of his wife holding a water bladder where he couldn’t quite reach it. He became angry. Why didn’t she come closer?
Then the iqyax lurched, and he was awake. He saw that it was night, the stars hidden by a cover of clouds. At first he did not know what had taken him from his dreams, but then he felt it again, a sudden movement as if someone were pushing his iqyax from behind, shoving it through the water.
He dipped a hand into the sea, even stopped his breathing, so he would feel nothing but the water. Yes, it was a current, running in a direction different than he had been traveling. Was the current running toward land, or should he paddle his way out of it? Had his iqyax turned while he was asleep? He needed the stars!
Best to stay with the current, he decided. He would have more difficulty finding it again than getting away from it. He sat awake through the night, impatient for the darkness to pass.
Dawn light came gray, with fog and clouds so heavy he could not see beyond the bow of his iqyax. He groaned in frustration, shouted curses with raw throat and angry words.
In spite of his disrespect, by midday the clouds had begun to lift. Then he noticed that his left eye was much clearer than it had been, the brown-red now covering only half his vision, as though someone had drawn a curtain back from the inside corner of the eye.
In all directions he saw nothing except the sea, but by the placement of the sun he could tell that the current flowed toward the northeast. Though his throat was parched for need of water, his tongue swollen so that he could not even sing, hope slaked his thirst.
By night he thought he saw a darkness in the east, something more than the line of the horizon dividing the sea from the sky. He slept fitfully, waking often in his need for morning. At daybreak, clouds again lay over the sea, but the sun had pushed in close to the earth, and its warmth burned off the haze until Cen was able to see clear sky, as warm as midsummer, blue from horizon to horizon.
He squinted, shielded his eyes, and watched until he knew that he was seeing land. When he shouted out his joy, he broke open the dry skin of his throat, tasted his own blood.
The sea-river he had come upon was lazy, and all that day he paddled beyond his strength. By night, the only way he could tell the land was any closer was by the shallow cuts he had made on the side of his thumb as he held it up to measure the height of that bit of land against the far edge of the sky.
He continued to paddle, even in the night, but the effort made him light-headed. Finally, he decided that he would have to eat, even if just a little. He still had a few dried fish, but they were softened by the sea and beginning to stink. He choked one down, its soft flesh slimy and rank. It made his stomach ache, but his head felt better. He started to paddle again, and his belly began to churn.
He fastened his paddle to the deck and lay back against the coaming, but his stomach only grew worse, until finally he vomited up all that he had eaten, gagging and choking until he was bringing up yellow bile. When the spasms finally stopped, he slid down as far as he could in his iqyax and lay very still. The water rocked him, and he was able to sleep.
It was still night when he awoke, the sky darkest in the east, the water black. Once again, he had dreamed of being caught in the wave. It had slammed him against the iqyax coaming, shattered his ribs, ripped open his stomach. The dream was so real that Cen had to shake it out of his head, but the pain in his belly did not subside. Instead, the spasms moved into his bowels.
He moaned. The fish had poisoned him. He unlashed his waterproof dripskirt and jerked his sax and chigdax up around his waist so that he was naked from hips to boots. He untied one of the empty water bladders, cut off the top, and raised himself up to crouch on his haunches. He opened the bladder and set it under his rump, then allowed the release from his bowels. The pain clenched him from waist to anus, twisted, pulled, as if dogs fought over the poor scraps of his gut. Well into morning his body continued to empty itself, until he felt hollow except for the air he breathed. But the pain had become a bearable ache.
When he was sure the spasms had stopped, he cleaned himself with sea water, threw out the bladder, and readjusted his clothing. His thirst was no longer something only of his mouth or throat. It had spread even to the ends of his fingers, the edges of his feet, so that he felt thin and brittle, as if a touch would crumble him. But finally he was able to sleep, and his dreams were of freshwater lakes, clear foaming streams.
Chapter Forty-three
CEN WOKE TO RAIN, steady and cold. He opened his mouth to the sky, let the water wet his tongue, fill his throat. Then he took off his chigdax, knotted the sleeves at the wrists, and held them open to catch the rain. The sleeves were nearly a qu
arter full before the rain turned into the spit of drizzle. He clenched one of the sleeves above the tie, undid the knot, and folded the wristband into the narrow neck of his water bladder. He lifted the chigdax, and the water flowed into the bladder. Then he did the same with the other sleeve.
He stoppered the bladder, then wrung the water from his hair into the palms of his hands, drank what he managed to claim, sucked the wet from the feathers of his sax. He scooped a handful of water from the bottom of the boat and drank it. But it tasted of salt, spoiled fish, and his own waste. Afraid it would make him sick again, he bailed it from the iqyax.
He was still weak from the vomiting and diarrhea, but his cleverness at catching the rain made him happy with himself. His sax was wet, the wind cold, so that his shivering became trembling. Suddenly he was afraid again. Cold could kill him more quickly than thirst. He slipped the chigdax on over the sax, felt some relief as it cut the wind and allowed the poor heat of his body to warm the sax, wet as it was. He pulled his arms in from the sleeves and crossed them over his chest, wincing at the pain in his ribs. He looked up at the sky, hoping to see a break in the clouds, and sent up a song asking for heat from the sun.
The rain had moved north, the edge of the clouds revealing clear skies south and west, but it was nearly night, so he knew the clearing would not bring him the heat of the sun, but the cold of the stars. He glanced toward the east and realized that he was seeing more than just the normal darkness at the end of a day. Even with his poor eyes, he could make out the jagged tops of mountains some distance from the shore. He lowered a strand of babiche into the sea, watched as it floated out behind him. The current was much swifter, more than just a river within the sea, but now also the force of waves driving themselves toward land.
For a moment another spasm grasped him, and he tensed against it, but he then realized it was only nervousness, a man considering an unknown shore without a strong paddle, with injuries and weak vision. What chance was there that the waves would bring him to a gentle cove? He had found a river within the sea, but it would approach land with the strength that any river holds. More than likely, he would make landfall at night, blinded by darkness. Low tide or high?
With a stronger paddle, he could have moved himself parallel to the shore until morning, but with what he had, and with most of his strength gone, he knew he could not escape the sea-river’s current and the power of the breakers that would drive him ashore. He moaned, and a voice came into his head, something old from long ago.
“So you are complaining again?”
His father’s voice? No, stronger than that.
“I need a good paddle,” Cen answered, speaking aloud.
“You’re worried about your paddle?”
“Of course. Look at it. It’s just a branch, a piece of driftwood.”
“Worry is just another form of complaint. Look at all the good things you have. You needed water, and it rained. You needed to see, and your eyes have cleared.”
“But my ears …”
“You needed to hear, and you can hear me.”
Cen grew angry, began to shout. “You speak to my spirit. That’s not hearing! If I could hear, I would know how the currents run against the beach, how the waves break.”
He shouted until his throat grew so raw that his words were no more than the movement of his lips. Then he no longer heard the voice. The clouds covered the eastern sky throughout the night, darkened land and sea into blackness. Cen sat, eyes and ears straining, ready any moment for the crush of waves breaking.
When morning first grayed the edges of the sky, he realized that somehow the current had slowed. He could see sea birds wheeling and turning, but there was still some distance to the shore.
He made a prayer of gratitude, one he had learned as a child. Though the simple words did not seem enough for a man, he could think of nothing else.
The sea grew choppy, and the iqyax bounced on the water. Cen untied his paddle and used it to keep the bow into the waves. As he neared the shore, he floated over a bed of kelp, and found that he could direct himself by grabbing the stipes of the plants, pulling until he could grab another. In that way, he moved past a cliff that dropped sheer into the water.
His hands and fingers grew numb, and he could hardly make them grab the kelp, could scarcely let go when it was time for another handhold. He had seen men drown this close to land. He had been little more than a boy when he went out with a group of hunters after harbor seals. A current had pulled them all into rocks, and several of the iqyan covers were sliced open. One of the men managed to crawl across the bow of his hunting partner’s iqyax, but the others, three in all, had held to their own crafts, which had sunk as water filled the hulls. The sea had been so cold that soon their muscles cramped, arms and legs clenched so they could no longer flail to keep themselves afloat.
In trying to save the man closest to him, Cen had driven his iqyax into the rocks and sliced its cover as well, but the worst of the cut had been above the waterline. He had not been able to reach the hunter before the man drowned, and by the time Cen managed to get ashore, his iqyax was full of water, the craft riding so low that even the smallest waves broke over the deck.
Now he forced his hands to grasp the shaft of his cedar branch paddle. Pain pierced each of his fingers, sent sharp messages up his arms.
“Be grateful,” he heard the voice say, and in anger Cen ground his teeth.
He lifted tortured hands, plunged the paddle into the sea, and willed the kelp to ignore the wide and awkward blade, but it wrapped itself over the paddle, bound it tight.
Cen pulled, but the waves worked with the kelp, jerked his iqyax toward an outcropping of rocks. Cen pulled harder, and his ribs seemed to rip from his spine. He screamed and lifted the paddle, twisted it, heard the snap of the wood, not with his ears but with the bones of his hands. Then the kelp swallowed the blade and half the shaft.
“Be grateful,” the voice whispered.
Cen’s scream needed no words, and he began to jab the stick into the sea. Again and again he plunged the broken end into the water, screaming until a layer of the skin in his throat peeled away, until he could no longer draw breath through the blood that filled his mouth.
Then he was still, exhausted, cradling the remains of the paddle in his arms, spitting up blood, crying.
But finally, when his throat had stopped bleeding and he was again able to draw air, he whispered, “I am grateful.”
He bound the remains of his paddle to the deck. With fumbling hands, fingers like stone, he managed to pull the stout end of the cedar branch from where he had stored it inside the iqyax. He tied it to the deck with a harpoon line, so that if the waves pulled it from his grasp, he would be able to bring it back to himself.
Then he lifted his hands toward the sky and shouted, “I am grateful!”
Without the stick, he could never have brought his iqyax safely to shore. Rocks lurked under the surface, hidden until Cen was nearly upon them. Then he would push off, shove himself away before the rock could tear through the thin iqyax cover. Once he cracked the keelson hard on the seaward edge of a reef, but the iqyax was well made, and though the keelson stove in for a moment, it popped back out when Cen pushed away.
He followed the edge of the reef until it opened. The split was narrow, hardly the width of his iqyax, and the current was strong, a river flowing between the two sides of the gravel reef, but he managed to aim the boat well, and the current carried him through. Once past the reef, he was in a deep pool of calm water. Cen laid the stick over the bow and studied the shore.
He was close enough now that there was little danger. Even if he destroyed his iqyax on rocks, most likely he could escape. The cliffs had given way to a rolling beach, duned with large hills of gray and golden sand, striated as though fingers had pulled the colors together, drawing them into one another. But the land came up quickly from the water in a rise that was as tall as a man—not an easy place to bring in an iqyax, especiall
y for someone as battered and weak as Cen.
He poled himself along the beach until it widened, the dunes receded, and the land grew flat. He had not realized how afraid he had been until his fear seeped away, leaving him empty, tired. Perhaps fear was the only thing that kept him trying. Now he just wanted to sleep. But he forced himself to consider the land, to set his mind on the problems that would face him there, dangers different from what he had faced on the sea.
He had few weapons, the knives the storm had left him, and his stout cedar stick, but little else. What good would those things do against wolves or bear? He had nothing left that anyone would take in trade save a bundle of shell necklaces and his iqyax. The iqyax needed a new cover, but the frame still seemed strong.
He glanced at the beach he was passing, saw the mouth of a small river, and grimaced. Most likely the outflow of the river would have carved itself a path through the reef, and he did not want to get caught in a current that might carry him back out to sea. It was time to put his iqyax ashore.
Dread caught at him, pushed fingers into his throat and crept down to squeeze his heart.
Fool, he told himself. You have wanted nothing more than this since the wave took you. Here you are on a good beach, in a place where it will be easy to land, and you are suddenly afraid!
He shifted his knees and legs, dug his pole in at the seaward side of the iqyax, and turned it toward the beach. Waves took him, sped him toward shore, and he wished he could backpaddle to slow himself.
“This is nothing,” he said aloud to the iqyax, hoping to lend it courage.
He was right; the land rose gradually under the water, so that when the waves finally drove him ashore, there was no more than a small jolt, a scraping of gravel against the hull.
Cen lifted his voice in a cry of thanksgiving. “Be grateful,” he shouted. “Be grateful!”
He thrust the stick under the paddle bindings that crossed the top of the iqyax, then braced his hands on either side of the coaming. Usually he jumped out with legs spread, one on either side of the iqyax, but this time, when he landed his legs did not hold him, and he found himself sitting awkwardly in the coaming, a leg on each side. He started to laugh, rolled himself off the iqyax and onto the wet sand. A wave dashed in and slapped over his chest, up into his mouth. He pushed himself up with his arms and again tried to stand, but his legs were weak, and all he could do was crawl. He thrust a hand into the paddle ties of the iqyax and managed to drag it with him up the rise of the beach and finally out of the reach of waves. Then he collapsed. He lay there breathing hard, and the ground moved in undulations as though the sea still held him.
